and lard, vats of jelly, cutting tools–once I even saw a cat licking itself

in the middle of it all. The baker was this lanky black man

who never said a word. He did everything,

from sliding the raw dough on platters

into a long wall oven, then pulling them out when time.

He set the platters on the table and went at them

with his tools, and, before you could blink, out popped

wet glazed, chocolate, jelly, cream and powdered donuts.

The two helpers, a one-armed galoot, blue with smudged tattoos,

and a tiny old lady with leaking bandages cinched around her wrists,

took orders, dumped the donuts into white bags, and worked the register.

Best damned donuts in the world, we thought–so hot they steamed,

so greasy they moaned, so undercooked it was like eating paste.

We bought them by the bagful and drove out to the lakefront

where we parked and feasted. Once Jimmy ate two dozen

jellies at one sitting. He started to puke later, but at fifteen

puking is no big deal. That same time I turned a little green.

This went on and on until one night we made the usual trek

only to find the place boarded up. A sign from the Board of Health

dangled from a sole nail. We didn’t bother to read it.

We understood. Nothing so good can last for long.

The roaches didn’t bother us, or the cat hair

that occasionally wound up in our mouths . . . even Miss Penny’s

gauze (though dad told us it was probably diabetes).

Something was happening to the world –

it become cleaner, healthier, more official. Older.

And decades later we’d realize those donuts

were the most foul concoctions a quarter could buy.

But that’s not the way we choose to remember them.

Best damned donuts in the world. Ever.

Louis Gallo’s work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Greensboro Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, New Orleans Review, Missouri Review, Portland Review, Texas Review and many others. He is on faculty at Radford University, Virginia.